THE Cheltenham Festival may have a magnetic drawing power for the sport of jump racing, but it can still produce polar

opposites.

The winner’s enclosure represents a year’s planning, scheming and dreaming but Alan King was the outsider looking in after Yanworth had been beaten by Yorkhill in the Neptune Investments Novices’ Hurdle last year.

Yanworth had been regarded as a banker of the meeting for many but King bore the look of a man whose stock had plummeted through the floor and, when he was asked for his plans, he said simply: “I’m going for a bloody drink.”

Twelve months later Yanworth is among the favourites for the Stan James Champion Hurdle and King is hopeful of adding to his 15 Festival winners, something that he could not manage last year when he had just three winners in all of March.

“He was beaten by a good horse on the day but it was the period of the season when my horses just weren’t firing,” King said. “I woke up that morning almost thinking ‘this won’t win’ because of how things were going but it was still hugely disappointing.

“He made a slight mistake, got caught wide and the winner kicked and we got trapped out again. The one thing was that he did was knuckle down and he tried all the way to the line.”

Some have tried to criticise the horse in three runs this season but he has won each of them, and Barry Geraghty never appeared that flustered in the saddle. A step up in trip at Ascot did not play to the strengths of a horse who would appear tailor-made for a fast-run two miles on a stiff track, and a shuffling of the pack of owner JP McManus put Yanworth on course for the Champion Hurdle.

“It looked like we might be going the staying route but then Unowhatimeanharry came on the scene and then we knew the Christmas Hurdle was the next race and on to the Champion,” King said. “He’s a very athletic type of horse and he covers a lot of ground. I don’t think he quickens, I think he lengthens.”

Yanworth won both the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton and the Kingwell at Wincanton and, if neither performance was exactly electrifying, he appeared switched on enough for what is now an open-looking renewal of the two-mile hurdling championship.

“You have to remember that Kempton and Wincanton are not his ideal tracks, but there was nowhere else to go,” King explained. “The plan was to go to Sandown for the Contenders Hurdle as his prep for Cheltenham but we couldn’t do that because he had a little setback so it was Wincanton or nowhere. And he still managed to win.”

Yanworth did so wearing cheek pieces but King does not regard that as a sign of any temperamental issues. “That was Barry’s idea, and I didn’t want to come to Cheltenham not having tried them on a racecourse. I just thought when he gets tight to a hurdle he almost jumps it too well and Barry wanted him to be just a little bit slicker. That did the trick and he’ll wear them again. We know we can get him better than he was at Wincanton.

“To be fair, until he got beaten in the Neptune, he’d never come off the bridle hurdles. Any athlete needs some proper match practice. You see it in tennis with players cruising through and then they get a hard match and it’s a shock. And horses are no different. This season he’s had three proper races and, hopefully, he’s a harder horse than he was a year ago. He pricked his ears passing the post at Wincanton and that’s always a good sign.”

The signs are looking promising for Master Blueyes who was a fluent winner of the Adonis Hurdle at Kempton Park last month and appears to be King’s best shot of a third victory in the JCB Triumph Hurdle while mention of the prospects of Dino Velvet’s chances in the Fred Winter Hurdle suggests that King believes that horse might still be one step and a couple of pounds ahead of the handicapper.

The handicap for Uxizandre, who like Yanworth, will be ridden by Irishman Mark Walsh as the replacement for the injured Geraghty, was the nearly two-year absence with a leg injury. Uxizandre won the Ryanair Chase at the 2015 Festival but was then off the track until he ran in the Clarence House Chase in late January, which was restaged at Cheltenham after the original meeting at Ascot was abandoned.

Once again King found himself in the space for the runner-up, after Uxizandre was beaten by Un De Sceaux, but King had seen enough to be looking forward to the rematch in the Ryanair.

“I don’t normally like seconds but I was thrilled with that,” he said. “He exceeded my expectations that day. He was taking on top-class horses who were race fit and he powered on up that hill. We knew then that there was no time to get another run into him and he did nothing for the next 12 days and I’m hoping that the best part of seven weeks will take the bounce factor out of the equation.”

If King can bounce back into the winner’s enclosure this week he will be ready to raise a glass again.